Hangman, Interpretive Dancing and the King
by 142staircases
Summary: Ever wondered how Fred and George might react when they found out that they were living in the same house as two of their idols? We certainly did. Set during OOTP. Oneshot.


**AN:** Yet another oneshot, courtesy of 142staircases. Hope you all enjoy.

**Disclaimer:** I feel like a parrot who has been trained to say "no" whenever present with a note about disclaimers...

It was one of those days. No one really felt like doing anything. Mrs. Weasley was (surprisingly) not cracking the whip and so they were sitting in the kitchen of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. Except Mrs. Weasley. No one was sure where she was.

Harry and Ron were playing hangman and chess simultaneously (that way, each one of them could win at a game).

Hermione was reading a book that Ron was determined was about love, but was actually about slavery.

Ginny was playing with Crookshanks.

Lupin had the Daily Prophet open and was reading an article that somehow managed to trash Harry and make Fudge look like Einstein in one (which would have required an Einstein to do in the first place—it was a pity, in Lupin's opinion, that there were so many smart reporters who were hell bent on not telling the truth).

Fred and George were leaning over a piece of paper, working on calculations. Why, calculations, I hear you ask? Well, they had miscalculated the amount of blood in the human body; they had determined previously that there were six gallons. Hermione had told them differently—six quarts, not six gallons. They had not believed her and so had asked Lupin, who sided with Hermione. He had added that it was because of this very miscalculation that some muggle President had died before his time because those muggle nutters intent on cutting people open had bled him dry. In any case, they were now trying to prevent their Nosebleed Nougat from accidentally killing someone by bleeding them dry.

Sirius was not there.

Where was he?

Walking down the steps and into the kitchen.

"Moony," He began; Fred and George looked up in shock, "I was just looking through some of my mum's old letters, and you know what I found?" Remus shook his head; Fred and George looked at each other, "A letter from out fifth year saying that you and I were going to be suspended if we continued stealing Coleen Freznic's glasses and telling her that the words on the blackboard were not related to charms, but were actually" he observed the letter he was holding in his hand; Fred and George looked like astounded goldfish, "song lyrics/profanities/jokes/rumors etc. Man, those were the days, weren't they?"

Fred and George found their voices.

"What did you call him?" demanded George.

"Huh?" Sirius looked a bit confused.

"Did you call him Moony?" elaborated Fred.

"Yeah. Old school nickname." Harry and Ron were motioning wildly to Sirius, trying desperately to get him to stop talking. Apparently, Sirius thought their miming looked a bit like a rather strange interpretative dance, and so chose to ignore them. "I'm Padfoot, James was Prongs and Peter Pettigrew was Wormtail."

Fred and George stared for a moment. Then they stared at Lupin. Then they returned to Sirius.

"Why are you asking?" asked Lupin mildly, although it was clear from the inflection in his tone (to Hermione, if no one else) that he knew precisely why they were asking.

"Well, er, we…foundyourmap," said George. A moment later, he and Fred were groveling on the ground in front of Lupin and Sirius. They were bowing and saying things along the lines of "we worship you", " we are not worthy to sit at the same table as you", "tell us all of your secrets" and "we aspire to be you, except for the misunderstood mass-murderer and misunderstood werewolf bit, but you understand, of course you do, because you are brilliant and you are our gods!"

Lupin and Sirius looked at each other. Sirius grinned. "So you got the Map first, eh? I knew Harry had it, but I thought he had gotten it out of the caretaker's office. I should have known."

"How did you know that Harry had the map?" demanded Fred quickly. He looked at Harry, who turned his _shut-up _miming into an interpretive dance. "What are you doing, Harry?"

"I was trying to figure out how long it would take you to notice my interpretive dance." Harry replied, knowing that all hopes of conveying his message to Sirius through motion were completely dashed.

"Oh. How did you know Harry had the map?" he asked Sirius again.

"Because Remus told me."

"How did he know?"

"Because I confiscated it from Harry in his third year." Fred and George looked astounded from their groveling positions. Lupin understood the true meaning of Harry's interpretive dance and decided to steer the conversation away from dangerous territory. "I gave it back to him though. Don't worry. I had to take it away, as a teacher. But I returned it, because I knew James (and Sirius, for that matter) would have had me publicly flogged if I had kept it away from Harry."

"Fred, George, get up," said Sirius. They rose instantly and stood at attention, rather like they were in the army.

Remus added, "Sit down, and go back to what you were doing. None of this matters. It is important that you don't accidentally kill people with your Skiving Snackboxes."

"Wait a minute!" said Fred.

"You can't be serious!" said George.

"Of course this matters!"

"You have to tell us everything!"

Lupin looked at Sirius. Sirius looked at Lupin. Sirius joined them at the table.

Harry, under the pretext of being tired out from his interpretive dancing and in severe need of a drink of water, went to the sink, passing Sirius as he did so. He slipped his godfather the following note:

_We have not told Fred and George that you are Moony and Padfoot. They will kill us if they know we withheld this information. Please please please please _PLEASE_ don't tell them. _

_Thank You,_

_Harry, Ron and Hermione._

Sirius looked at the note. Then, he put it face down on the table. He nodded to Harry when Harry returned with his cup of water. A look of severe relief passed over Harry's face.

"Nope. No F. You die. Bishop to king's knight 5. Check." He said to Ron.

"What?! What's the word?!" demanded Ron angrily (and somewhat shrilly). "Queen to king's knight 5. Check mate."

"Pterodactyl," said Hermione, glancing over from her book.

"That's not a word!"

"Yes it is. It's a type of dinosaur."

Ron grumbled and pulled the paper towards him, thinking of the hardest word he could so that he could beat Harry.

"Didn't you say that James was a Marauder?" asked Ginny. Ron kicked her. She growled at him.

"Well, yeah, he was. Didn't I tell you that Harry?" Sirius asked, in a stage voice.

"No. You didn't. I had no idea. Tell us more, Sirius" said Harry loudly (and not very convincingly).

"What was the best thing you ever got in detention for?" demanded Fred.

"Well, after our Defense O.W.L.—" Sirius began.

"You can't tell that one, Sirius," interrupted Lupin, pointedly.

Sirius looked a bit crestfallen. "Ask me again in a year, when they" he motioned to Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny, "aren't around. It's great. You guys'll wet yourselves."

"You got in a lot of trouble from James in our seventh year, remember?"

"Oh yeah! That was great! James was made Head Boy for some reason I can't fathom," Sirius began.

("You mean, because he actually grew the maturity side of his brain?" snorted Lupin.)

Fred and George looked disgusted, clearly thinking of Percy.

Sirius continued. "Don't hold it against him. We did some great stuff with him in a position of power. But then again, he also liked to use that power to threaten us with detention, and point deductions and whatnot, and we just couldn't have that, now could we? So sometimes we pulled tiny little pranks on him, just for a laugh you know? Now, before he and Lily got together, James was walking on eggshells around her. They were kind of getting along, and he wanted that to progress, so he wanted to appear to be this mature, human being all the time. Now, Lily's favorite song was by this guy called Elvis Peasley."

"Elvis Presley," corrected Lupin.

"Who's telling this story, Moony, you or me?"

"I am just making sure you don't dishonor Lily's memory by misremembering her favorite song."

"I don't misremember it. I remember it quite well, as a matter of fact. Because," he turned back to Fred and George, "we—"

"Ahem?"

"I decided that it would be funny to charm James so that whenever he opened his mouth, he would sing that song. Every time he did, his face got redder and redder. And of course, then I—"

"Ahem?"

"Remus here had the idea that we should put him in an Elvis costume and give him a funny hairdo. It was truly wonderful." Sirius leaned back in his chair, his eyes misty from fond memories. Fred and George laughed appreciatively, although they had no clue who Elvis Presley was, or how to imagine James Potter dressed like him. Harry grinned over from the hangman game (although that might have been because he had figured out that Ron's word was _Parliamentary_). "To our benefit, it made Lily look at James in a whole new way. McGonagall too, for that matter. It may not have been one of the best pranks we pulled (because we can't tell you those—they involve a certain someone whose dignity we can't profane) but it is certainly my favorite. Anyway, once James figured out how to undo the spells—"

"Why didn't McGonagall do it?" asked Ginny. Crookshanks was now chasing his tail. (Although Crookshanks was not a stupid cat, he enjoyed chasing his tail. It is rather how some people like playing with their hair when they are bored. Ginny had stopped paying attention to him a while ago, as she was shocked by Fred and George's groveling and Harry's interpretive dances, so now Crookshanks was chasing his tail.) Fred and George hissed at her things along the lines of "stop asking questions, Ginny! You are embarrassing us!" "Ginny, let them talk. They are gods" and "Ginny, I will shove that cat down your throat if you don't cork it."

"Well, McGonagall, bless her, thought it was very funny, and so didn't reverse it."

"She was angry at James for ignoring his post every now and then," added Lupin, smiling.

"I'm telling this story, Moony! Let me finish! Anyway, once James broke the spell, he chucked us into detention so fast!" Sirius banged his hand against the table, causing the letter to his mother and the note from Harry to jump a little. "We were helping Professor Sprout with her Dragon Dung Fertilizer for about a month. But it was worth it."

"Wow!" Fred grinned.

George did not grin. George frowned. George was reading the note that had flipped over when Sirius had banged his hand against the table. He pointed. Fred frowned too. Sirius, mortified, snatched the note off of the table and shoved it into his pocket. But the damage was done. The twins were angry. Both turned (in their army-like manner) to Harry, Ron and Hermione.

"YOU KNEW AND YOU DIDN'T _TELL_ US!?!?!?" they roared in unison.

Ron and Harry cringed. Sirius flushed. Lupin raised an eyebrow. Ginny returned to petting Crookshanks (who promptly stopped chasing his tail).

"AFTER ALL WE _DID_ FOR YOU!!! WE GAVE YOU THE MAP!! WE THREW YOU QUIDDITCH AND TRIWIZARD PARTIES!! WE TOOK YOU IN LIKE YOU WERE OUR BROTHER!! YOU _ARE_ OUR BROTHER!! THIS IS A _BETRAYAL_ FROM OUR OWN HOUSE!! IT'S AS BAD AS PERCY!!"

Ginny growled.

"That's overstepping the line!" snapped Ron (still cringing).

"All right, fine, you aren't as bad as Percy, BUT IT IS STILL A BETRAYAL!! HOW COULD YOU _DO_ THIS TO US!!??!!??!!??"

Harry and Ron cringed some more. Lupin looked mildly at them. Sirius was not looking at anyone because he was so embarrassed by his own carelessness. Crookshanks was chasing his tail, since Ginny was now paying attention to the humans again.

Hermione sighed, dog-eared the page in her book about slavery, and shut it with a snap.

"We didn't tell you at the time, because if we had told you we knew who the Marauders were, you would have demanded one, who they were, two, how we found out, and three, if you could meet them. We couldn't answer any of these questions very honestly for the following reasons. In answer to the first question, you thought Sirius was a mass-murderer, we didn't want to betray Professor Lupin's trust, and we were angry at having let Peter Pettigrew escape. So, on the whole, we were not inclined to reveal to anyone that we knew their secret identities from their days in school. Secondly, we could not tell you how we found out, because, as I have previously mentioned, of the whole Sirius-being-a-mass-murderer thing and the whole scenario involving Buckbeak, Hagrid and the illegal use of a time-turner. Thirdly, you already _had_ met a marauder in the form of Professor Lupin, so it would have been a waste of time us to answer this. So we were also saving you the trouble and the pain of learning the truth. As you can see now, it is quite painless, so you have found out."

Harry and Ron had stopped listening when Hermione had begun to use numbers, knowing that they were safe. As a thank you, they were planning on buying her flowers (or a book about flowers, they were arguing about it in note form on their hangman paper).

Fred and George were flabbergasted. They couldn't respond well when Hermione went into a list mode. They returned to their calculations with their metaphorical tails between their legs.

Lupin and Sirius were grinning at each other. Both were reminded strongly of when James had told them (in list form) why they should never fear being expelled from Hogwarts (his father being a former colleague of Dumbledore's in the International Confederation of Wizards and Dumbledore being a kind, forgiving old man with a wonderful sense of humor, among other things).

Ginny grinned at Hermione, and then began petting Crookshanks again.

Hermione returned to her book about slavery.

Mrs. Weasley came down the stairs.

"Well, I think if we work on painting the walls in the hallway, it won't seem so dank in here any more. I recommend some deafening charms though, or else the portraits will drive us all into insanity."

The world returned to as it had been before. Rather dull. Only now Fred and George were devising a list of questions to ask Moony and Padfoot. For the record, it was entitled "MWAHAHA".


End file.
